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Authors: John J. Gunther
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room. She rushed down the corridors and found him out in the garden, all dressed, lively and triumphant. “ I escaped!” he told her with great satisfaction, as a worried nurse came up. It was at about this time, too, that, discussing his various doctors, he said, “Maybe I will be a historic case!”
But after Penfield’s visit he was very wan and dispirited. He would stand in the doorway and look at us tentatively, appealingly. When he telephoned in the mornings and evenings, his voice had no body. The frightful strain had begun to drag him down. Half a dozen times, when Frances tried to keep him from doing too much, he would exclaim again in protest, “But, Mother, I have to get my work done!”
He could not have survived this summer had it not been for his mother’s brave and understanding spirit. So that he would not be frightened she talked to him as if casually about the narrow escapes she and other people had had from Death, and it relieved him greatly to learn that several of those whom he loved had almost died. She made the most of every medical ritual, and taught him to squeeze out of every conceivable occasion, no matter how painful, every atom of humor possible. She read him poetry on meditative and religious themes, and he made his own anthology of poems he liked by reciting them into a transcribing apparatus, and then playing them back when the mood was on him. Here, too, the sharp demarcation he made between Frances and me, based on his solicitude for us, became manifest. With Frances he talked of Death often; with me, almost never.
Johnny got his first doses of mustard between August 1 and 5. It had never been tried on a brain case before. Usually mustard makes a patient very sick at first. Also there was considerable local pain in that the veins in his arms were difficult to find, and the injections produced heavy bruising. Johnny puked plenty the first day, but not after that. Then there had to be a close watch on aftereffects, since one of the results of mustard is to drive the white blood count down. The figure may drop alarmingly, enough to scare out of his wits any doctor who does not know what is going on. The white blood corpuscles serve an important function in combating infection, and so it was necessary to keep dosing Johnny with huge amounts of penicillin too, as compensation for the temporarily lost white cells. When we drove up to the country we filled a rubber bag with dry ice and chucked the penicillin in it, and for over a month Johnny had to have a blood count every day, which was still another item in the onerous routine he had to undergo.
“How’s my blood, Father?” he would ask.
“Fine.”
“Let me know if it goes under a thousand.”
The first series of mustard shots did Johnny great benefit. Of this there is no reasonable doubt, I believe. They stepped up his vitality and made him fresher, stronger. As to the second series I am not so sure. For we decided on an additional course of mustard, and Johnny had these further shots late in August, when the first results seemed good and X-rays were still precluded by the state of the scalp.
Johnny checked out of this visit to Neurological presently and he was well enough, that same afternoon, to see the movie Henry V with Frances and my sister Jean and to walk a few blocks. But there was something sardonic in his last word to his favorite nurse when she said goodbye. “Oh,” he waved to her, “I’ll be back.”
I have before me now a slip of paper on which, that evening he scribbled down an agenda list for the country; it gives some measure of his ardent hopes and fears:
1
2
3
4
Bandage
Fluids
Sailing
Biclying (sic)
Swimming
Traveling
Rowing
Driving
Hair
Horse
Athletics
Pennicillin (sic)
Bone
Glasses
Nap
Out in the country he picked up quickly. One could see him brace himself valiantly and set about making up lost time. He did schoolwork and for relaxation worked out
But after Penfield’s visit he was very wan and dispirited. He would stand in the doorway and look at us tentatively, appealingly. When he telephoned in the mornings and evenings, his voice had no body. The frightful strain had begun to drag him down. Half a dozen times, when Frances tried to keep him from doing too much, he would exclaim again in protest, “But, Mother, I have to get my work done!”
He could not have survived this summer had it not been for his mother’s brave and understanding spirit. So that he would not be frightened she talked to him as if casually about the narrow escapes she and other people had had from Death, and it relieved him greatly to learn that several of those whom he loved had almost died. She made the most of every medical ritual, and taught him to squeeze out of every conceivable occasion, no matter how painful, every atom of humor possible. She read him poetry on meditative and religious themes, and he made his own anthology of poems he liked by reciting them into a transcribing apparatus, and then playing them back when the mood was on him. Here, too, the sharp demarcation he made between Frances and me, based on his solicitude for us, became manifest. With Frances he talked of Death often; with me, almost never.
Johnny got his first doses of mustard between August 1 and 5. It had never been tried on a brain case before. Usually mustard makes a patient very sick at first. Also there was considerable local pain in that the veins in his arms were difficult to find, and the injections produced heavy bruising. Johnny puked plenty the first day, but not after that. Then there had to be a close watch on aftereffects, since one of the results of mustard is to drive the white blood count down. The figure may drop alarmingly, enough to scare out of his wits any doctor who does not know what is going on. The white blood corpuscles serve an important function in combating infection, and so it was necessary to keep dosing Johnny with huge amounts of penicillin too, as compensation for the temporarily lost white cells. When we drove up to the country we filled a rubber bag with dry ice and chucked the penicillin in it, and for over a month Johnny had to have a blood count every day, which was still another item in the onerous routine he had to undergo.
“How’s my blood, Father?” he would ask.
“Fine.”
“Let me know if it goes under a thousand.”
The first series of mustard shots did Johnny great benefit. Of this there is no reasonable doubt, I believe. They stepped up his vitality and made him fresher, stronger. As to the second series I am not so sure. For we decided on an additional course of mustard, and Johnny had these further shots late in August, when the first results seemed good and X-rays were still precluded by the state of the scalp.
Johnny checked out of this visit to Neurological presently and he was well enough, that same afternoon, to see the movie Henry V with Frances and my sister Jean and to walk a few blocks. But there was something sardonic in his last word to his favorite nurse when she said goodbye. “Oh,” he waved to her, “I’ll be back.”
I have before me now a slip of paper on which, that evening he scribbled down an agenda list for the country; it gives some measure of his ardent hopes and fears:
1
2
3
4
Bandage
Fluids
Sailing
Biclying (sic)
Swimming
Traveling
Rowing
Driving
Hair
Horse
Athletics
Pennicillin (sic)
Bone
Glasses
Nap
Out in the country he picked up quickly. One could see him brace himself valiantly and set about making up lost time. He did schoolwork and for relaxation worked out
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